1770s Pink Wool Gown (or, Felicity's Spring Gown)

Short-ish post! This dress had so many false starts and stops, I never bothered to take in-progress pictures of it, nor is it constructed in an especially exciting way. It's just a basic closed-front 1770s gown. But it's pink and it's fun and I like it!

I think I started this dress in 2023? Bestie Robin and I had gone to Fort Fred market fair recently and I was inspired to make a new basic gown for the "next time we went to Fort Fred". (We haven't gone since.)  Some patient slash lucky ebay-ing later, I found a chunk of pink lightweight worsted wool suiting, and snapped it up. It was four yards and some change, so plenty for a closed-front gown, or an open-front gown without a matching petticoat. I have gowns in both styles, so I tossed a coin and closed won. (Finding affordable 100% wool fabric in fun colors has never been easy, and it's only gotten more difficult in the intervening three years. But what if I don't WANT pinstriped navy...)

Practicing writing with a quill pen...the Preamble to the Declaration because I was feeling "extra".

 I believe I got as far as fitting the bodice, constructing the lining, pleating up the back panel that's one length of fabric neck-to-hem, and pleated up the rest of the skirt panels. And stopped there, because the back skirt pleats were not behaving, where the skirt panel pleats met the pleated back. It can be a bit of a fussy interaction at the best of times, and this is a very spring-y wool twill. Lots of boing and does not like to stay pinned. This makes fussy pleating difficult, and my first pleating attempt did not lay flat at all and looked terrible. So I put it away for...a while.

Three years later...

I decided I wanted to come back to it and finish it for the spring Georgian picnic that we've been doing for a few years now, at Winterthur estate in Delaware. Lovely spot and they're very nice to let us come and play dress-up on their lawns. 

Honestly, the main motivation was my realizing that an apron out of Virgil's Fine Goods "Seraphina" print fabric would turn this into the Felicity Birthday Outfit "Dress Like Your Doll" I've wanted since 1995. (Like many Millennial costumers, I spent the 1990s poring over the American Girl doll catalogues. Yes, Felicity was my favorite!)

 

(You may notice that it is not in fact spring, in fact it is quite solidly fall. Said picnic got rained out FOUR times this year before we gave it up in despair. But a very small group was able to make it to the Germantown Revolutionary Festival a couple of weekends ago, so I was able to finish up the last little bits of sewing, wear it out to an event, and get pictures!) 

In the midst of pinning my apron back on.

 

I ended up having to do a bit of refitting - the original incarnation of the dress had been a stomacher front, and 1/ Felicity's dress didn't have a stomacher front, and more importantly, 2/ that original stomacher front bodice didn't fit me at ALL any more. So I picked the existing fronts off, mocked up new fronts that closed at CF, and cut and sewed new fronts and reattached the skirts (easier said than done, I assure you).

The sleeves are the ones from the original incarnation, and they're not the best-fitted sleeves I've ever made. They're much wrinklier over the shoulder than I would prefer, plus they ought to go a bit longer down over the elbow in the back. But perfect is the enemy of perfectly adequate, so on they went. And the wrinkly shoulder backs are mostly covered by the kerchief anyway. And I can play graces perfectly comfortably, which is always the best test of how 18thc sleeves fit!

Playing graces! How precisely graceful we were may be debated.

 

Other dress notes:

• I lined the bodice and sleeves in linen. 
• I hand sewed both the dress and the apron. 
• Construction-wise it's very simple; as a closed-front gown the front panel "drops" like an apron and is sewed to the back skirt about three-quarters of the way up the side, so doesn't require a separate "top" petticoat like an open gown. 
• The dress hem is a little wide for the period (quite wasteful of fabric!) but I cut the skirt panels a little too long, plus a narrow hem in this twill very much tended to curl up on itself, so I didn't bother trimming the skirt panels up. Just made a wide hem instead.
• I could probably stand to wear another petticoat under this dress, as the wool's a bit limp and makes for a fairly straight silhouette. Still within the "acceptable range", but another petticoat would make it look nicer.
• The pink wool is thin enough that the skirt isn't entirely opaque, so I have to be sure to wear a solid-colored petticoat underneath because a print will show through!
• The neck kerchief is a lovely lightweight embroidered cotton one from Burnley & Trowbridge. Currently they're on sale and there's one left! 

Apron notes:

• I started with the pattern shape of the bib apron in Costume Close-Up and just tweaked a mockup until I thought it worked on me.
• The CF point wrinkles when worn. It's annoying. Less wrinkly when I pin it into place.
• I reinforced the top and side "pin points" of the bib with bits of white linen on the back. The original doesn't have reinforcements but this print is a lightweight cotton lawn and it seemed sensible to me.
• This is solidly a fashion apron. Rather impractical but pretty! 

 

Hello, yes, I'm in the 18th century, how can I help you?

 

Verdict: It's a very comfortable gown and can dress up or down, depending on which accessories I wear with it. It's Very Pink. And I think it makes a charming Felicity outfit! :)

I love my friends and yes, we are silly!